The star of the new film taps into the classic thriller's paranormal influences to play a ghostly inspiration for legendary fashion photographer Arthur Elgort

Boy Meets World: Carrie's Ansel Elgort Plays Muse to His Father

Boy Meets World: Carrie's Ansel Elgort Plays Muse to His Father

“I have a lot of weird interests,” Ansel Elgort says while being patently ignored by a team of waiters at a trendy café in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood, “but everything I do is artistic.” That the son of opera director Grethe Holby and photographer Arthur Elgort—a fashion heavyweight who launched his career shooting Jerry Hall and Patti Hansen in the ’70s—has artistic inclinations is not surprising; that his pastimes range from creating house music under the moniker Ansolo, to scouring sample sales for Loro Piana and Y-3 finds, to participating in the underground world of competitive miniature painting (customizing figurines and then playing a tabletop strategy game with them) suggests that 19-year-old Elgort, who portrays consummate high school bully Tommy Ross in next month’s Carrie reboot alongside Julianne Moore and Chloë Grace Moretz, isn’t your average millennial.

“I think it’s important I stay connected to every part of my personality,” he says, happily draining the dregs of my lukewarm water and tossing a Link Larkin–esque coil of hair off his forehead. “I play basketball. I rock climb. I paint. I’m a little bit scattered, but it’s so I can convincingly play all these characters.” Though Carrie marks the 2012 Laguardia High School graduate’s film debut, Elgort has been acting professionally since he appeared in a 2003 production of The Nutcracker at New York’s prestigious Lincoln Center. “Most actors nowadays are models turned actors. That’s why a lot of young actors are terrible,” he gripes. “You have to learn how to act. It is not something that you can just do.”